Baseball brawls, culture and ethnicity

A USA TODAY Sports study of 67 bench-clearing incidents in Major League Baseball over the past five seasons found the main antagonists hailed from different ethnic backgrounds in 87% of the cases.
Just more than half of them - 34 - pitted white Americans against foreign-born Latinos. Another four featured white Americans and U.S.-born Latinos.

I mentioned this way back early in the season on the baseball thread, but I think you see a lot of white American players reacting to Latin players who never learned or don't buy into the unwritten rules, especially when it comes to celebrating.

Bomani Jones also made a good point on the radio yesterday. A generation ago when there were maybe one or two Latin players on a team they felt like they needed to conform more than today when maybe half a team might be Latin.

Bomani Jones also made a good point on the radio yesterday. A generation ago when there were maybe one or two Latin players on a team they felt like they needed to conform more than today when maybe half a team might be Latin.

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You'd have to go back a lot further than a generation to find "one or two Latin players on a team."

What I'd like here is for the great dq to look at the ethnic composition of baseball and figure out what the expectation would be that brawls would involve two people of different backgrounds. I'd think the expected frequency of those interactions would be very high.

Also -- one of the photos in the article details a fight between Carlos Quentin and Zack Greinke.

Quentin grew up in Chula Vista, went to private high school and Stanford -- about as upper-crust as you can get. Doesn't strike me as a culture clash, strikes me as a "stop standing on the fucking plate" clash.

Bench-clearing brawls in baseball aren't exactly new. Haven't they been around since the days when all the players were white?

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Not only are they not new, I believe they've become rarer in recent years. Although admittedly I've no data to back it up, to my memory it sure seems like they were far more frequent (and entertaining) back in the 80s than nowadays.

And that they usually involve different races doesn't surprise me, given the sport's current racial and cultural diversity. Doesn't strike me as much to be concerned about.

It is interesting that every big incident the Royals have been in this season, the main culprits on each side were Latin players from KC versus white American (or Canadian) players they beat in the playoffs last year.